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And in 1988 the a-320 launched and right away manufactures sold and it has been the fastest selling plane in the world and so you can imagine how many take off in a daily basis but you have a handful of these incidents so awful to hear about, including the one that happened today. >> indeed. awful to have that context. frances, thank you. we appreciate it. and lets bring in christine dennison founder of mad doing expedition and investigate yoror dan five. and obviously this debris field spread...

Germans. it was a german wings air bus a 320. a popular jet. this one about 24 years old. as we all know, the age of the jet doesnt matter as much as its maintenance record. the maintenance records for this particular airline are extremely good. our sister network sky news in the united kingdom is having a live report. lets listen. >> well, in fact, here at the french civil aviation administration, im being told that basically they will not be the ones conducting the investigation about this cra...

The speeds increase enormously. we do know that the ground speed indicates over 400 miles an hour, so there is some issue that prevented the flight crew from either recovering at an altitude that would have provided them the ability to maintain an altitude above the terrain or there was an issue that prevented them, such as incapacitation incapacitation. thats yet to be determine or confirmed. hopefully, one of the boxes will tell us that. >> john let me come back to you and ask you about the ma...

Inex inex inexplicably crashed into a mountain. its plane model used across the word. it takes off for lands every 2.5 seconds every day. >> reporter: worldwide, more than 3600 airbus a-320 are flown at more than 400 airlines. eight american carriers combined have more than highway a-320s in thinker fleet. among the biggest jet blue with 130. united had 97. delta and u.s. airways 69 each. in the short to medium range world its second only to the boeing 737 which is delivered nearly 8,000 of its ...

Were referencing. so it certainly is a mountainous region but its not the highest peak. so its a very odd time to have a crash. you could always have issues with icing. you could have problems concerning that. but -- >> mary -- >> its an odd time. >> we get that. lets reset the information that we know right now in case youre just joining us. we have reports from french and german and british and "reuters" media outlets all reporting the same thing, it appear as commercial aircraft has gone down...

The a 320 would be somewhere around 180 i would suspect. >> so it was -- >> before we let you go, when people say a discount airline, that doesnt mean theyre going by things cheaply, that just means theres no frills. >> yes, german wings had been there been. and german wings had gone bankrupt and was absorbed by another company. when i flew for this german airlines in munich, the quality of the pilots was excellent. >> a former pilot and air traffic controller -- if youre just waking up right no...

Again, some difficulty in the cockpit, has them preoccupied. any of those combinations can occur. >> tell me about the a 320, the type of plane this is. >> its a medium range. fly by wire. youve had the a 320 that crash would airasia, sime type of aircraft. its a highly automated aircraft. computer driven where the pilots are mostly outside of the control route until something happens and they have to go inside the control loop. >> it sounds like -- im looking at a news report out of the area, i...

As ann pointed out, a large contingent of school kids comes from a school outside of dusseldorf. we have six crew members and captain had been flying for ten years for lufthansa, the parent company of germanwings, being a budget airline that is another company that is owned by lufthansa. lets talk about what we know more about the aircraft itself. this isnt the first tragedy for the airbus a-320. francis rivera has a history. >> we heard about the a-320, its a workhorse of modern aviation, heard...

>> whose call is it where they head next? if they call air traffic control and they say weve got this problem, we dont know what it is at this point, does air traffic control say you should turn around, go forward, or is it the people in the cockpit who decide were going to try to put it down over here? >> no. unless the crew asks specifically, its going to be the captain and the first officer who decide. >> we cant thank you enough for your analysis on this. stay close to your phone. we want to...

Auto pilot at that point. the speed should not have been varying, that it did vary is a point that investigators will zero in on as soon as they get the black boxes. the flight data recorder in particular. >> tom also mentioned censors on the plane that could have frozen over mary. can you expound on that? >> yes. there was -- there has been a warning put out by airbus that this particular plane model, 320, 321 had something called a stuck angle of attack indicator, and it had happened on anothe...